Filled the lone cave and made its rocky bounds
Invisible; and thus they might have seen,
(But that their eyes were closed in heavenly sleep)
The bright stars drifting on the ethereal tide,--
The moon at quarter, like a golden boat
Rock onward to its changing destiny--
The great sun, rising from the under-world,
Blanch all the planets with his fiery rays.
Beneath them were the blue Aegean sea,
Miletus, and the proud Ephesus, where
Rose the world's miracle of marble white,
The Temple of the goddess worshiped there.
Day follows night and night the busy day;
The generations come and go apace,
The child hath left his toys, and in the whirl
Of years is now a grandsire by the hearth,
And now hath passed away and is forgot.
Two hundred years are fled, when, lo! one day
A mason finds the moss-grown wall of stone
Built by the cruel Decius, strong and high,
And knowing not it is a sepulchre,
He quarries it to build a palace wall.
And so the light of day beams in again
Upon the youths, who wake to grateful prayer
That blessed day has come so soon again,
(For all their sleep seemed but an hour's delight)
And Malchus, cautiously descends the mount,
To buy their bread in pagan Ephesus.
Yet much he fears the tyrant Decius
And the rough buffets of the Roman Guard.